The Joker's Harlequin
by oldfashionedromantic
Summary: When Harleen Quinzel meets John Oaks the young therapist has no idea that her life will be turned upside down.


**The Joker's Harlequin**

Chapter one

 _First sighting_

Why hadn't she listened to her mother? Why hadn't she run when she had the chance Harleen Quinzel shook her head as she wondered not for the first time how she had ended up like this, she had once been a young beautiful P. HD candidate studying psychology and getting her dream job down at Arkham Asylum.

Her mother had always told her that she was worried about her morbid fascination with the odd and sickly in the brain. They were no good, her mother used to say, no good and when you play with a tiger, one got bit. Harleen had laughed at the time, but nowadays she wished she had listened and gone into the realm of child psyche instead. Because she played with the tiger and she got bit… _hard._ She had grabbed the tiger by the tail and had made the mistake of letting go; and not just any tiger either. the rare emerald headed violet tiger with the moon white face who never roared no…he simply _laughed._

And what a terrible laughter it was! This tiger had all the charm of a jungle cat and all the finesse of a hyena. When he roared, it came out like a sickening cackle filled with the most sadistic joy. It was the sort of sound that made the skin crawl up a person's arm, a deadly sound that seemed to worm its way under the flesh into the very fiber of the victim's being and trapped them in a paralyzing fear. Harleen groaned, as she poured another cup of coffee and rocked back and forth remembering that day so many years ago when her life had been turned upside down and her dreams had turned to nightmares.

Harleen had been so thrilled with the news that she had gotten the job at Arkham and did her best to dispel the butterflies in her stomach. She had been warned over and over that applying here would leave no good behind and that her employer Eddward Arkham had driven himself mad trying to help these people but she had a deep feeling inside her that this is what she was meant to do with her life. She had to admit the man was jumpy when she had first made his acquaintance, the shriveled sort of old codger that was so unsteady on his feet that even the cane, held tightly in his fist wobbled uncontrollably as he walked. He hobbled hunched over like Victor Hugo's famed hunchback to his chair and peered through fish-bowl glasses at her resume.

"Good afternoon Mr. Arkham, my name is Hareleen Quinzel and…"

The old man glared at her, effectively shutting her up. He had yellow eyes, stained with too much cigarette smoke. He wore mud-colored suspenders and had a bald head with snowy white patches, a potbelly, and his white shirt had been stained with God only knew what. When he leaned over to reach for the cup of now cold black coffee on the table, his breath wreaked of cheap, badly-aged bourbon and smoke. His brown slacks the same color of his overalls had crude patches on the knees the color of infected mucus. He did not look like a happy man and it would not be long before Hareleen found out why she had been brought there on that chilly Halloween Eve.

"Yes," he said in a raspy wheeze that suggested the start of severe respiratory problems. "I know exactly who you are my dear." He told her with a smile composed of cracked and rotting teeth.

"I applied for a job here sir." She started, hoping he would let her finish this time.

The old man stopped her again nodding stiffly as he lit a smelly tobacco pipe and blew out clouds of silvery smoke in her face. Not wanting to be rude to her prospective employer she tried her best to hide the watering of her eyes and endure the stink without gagging. Thankfully it worked and she could not offend the man as he downed the coffee and doused his pipe in the glass of water she had assumed was for her but apparently not. Mr. Arkham looked her up and down nodded in apparent approval and pushed her papers back towards her. Harleen, not knowing what else to do took them, folded then neatly and put them back in the briefcase beside her.

"Yes, you will be perfect…" he mused.

"Perfect?" she asked.

The old man looked at her and nodded sadly, "It's my son John…" he whispered, "The boy is stark-raving mad."

"Oh, I'm sorry." She told him and she meant it.

This simple three-word statement seemed to agitate him and he growled throwing the contents of the table to the floor with a resounding crash. Harleen backed away for fear she might get hit with or step on a shard of glass or porcelain from the broken cups on the ground. Harleen backed away and saw the man rounding on her with wild eyes he cried.

"My son is insane the red baron they call him…they now call him the Joker." He sobbed, "they said he was beyond hope but with a resume like yours surely you can help him."

Her heart broke, and she stammered, "I will do my best Mr. Arkham…"

The old codger fell to his knees, kissed her hands and thanked her profusely and told her to report to Arkham Asylum first thing that next morning.

She remembered when she had first met Mister John Oaks… as he was formerly known. Harleen had been young, just twenty-four the youngest doctoral candidate Gotham had seen in 40 years. Blonde and blue eyed and innocent as she was she had heard that this was the man who had terrorized the city as the notorious Red Hood before a terrible accident malformed him. His deformity was not one of legend, not at first the very least. No, she had assumed that it was some grizzly and blistered affair with red splotches and bumps.

Nothing like this, nothing prepared her for the sight that had met her on that fateful day when John Oaks had walked into her life. She remembered her first day at Arkham as clearly as if it were yesterday. It was a bright sunny day when she had arrived an ironic backdrop to the dark twisted future she had not known lay ahead of her. Mrs. Quinzel had insisted on driving her up to the massive iron gates of the hospital herself and gulped at the sight of the spooky old building with the words **'Arkham, home for the mentally deranged'** in painted calligraphy that she was sure had once been beautiful.

The words had once been golden and had no doubt glinted in the sunlight, but like the building itself, had become faded and run down with the terrible hand of time. Of course, that had not bothered Harleen none, she had always been fascinated by the mysterious and spooky aspects of the world. The crazy and bizarre were her favorite thing in the world, she had been obsessed with slasher movies since she was a small child and the sick and twisted enthralled her to no end and so she had gone about her way to becoming some type of therapist, of course, she had never imagined this sort of thing would happen to her.

She kissed her mother on the cheek and went inside, after the usual introductions she was lead down a dark corridor of men, women and even a child or two. If she had been anyone else, she would have been scared shitless of this place with its babbling freaks who jittered and chattered tirelessly like babbling monkeys trapped too long in a glass cage which had no bars and no bunks. Nothing inside them but a suicide blanket and nothing on but their underwear left to shiver in the cold cement boxes that these poor lost souls were now forced to call home.

Mr. Arkham was standing at the end of the long corridor in his weary hunchback way as she made her way passed the freaks to the darkest room where she heard the most peculiar sound. A high-pitched cackle echoing in the empty room. He reached for the rusty key ring and unlocked the door which screeched open.

"Son?"

The man turned and Harleen froze.


End file.
